The Hafencity Universität Station is a U-Bahn station in Hamburg famous for its gorgeous futuristic colorful illumination. For us, it looked like a movie set, something out of Blade Runner, and we knew we had to go there.
In October 2021, we visited Hamburg once again, and we asked around on Instagram for tips. We were looking for some unusual sights. One person advised us to take our cameras to the Hafencity Universität Station. We had never heard about this station before, so we were skeptical, but once we saw some pictures of it, we were sold on that.
The Hafencity Universität Station opened to the public in November 2012. The station’s design was done by an architecture firm called Raupach Architekten, based in Munich. Visually speaking, their design uses the ever-changing color changes of the HafenCity as a metaphor for the colorful lights inside the station.
The blues in the stations represent the water; the reds are the red brick from the wharf buildings and the metals from the ships that pass by.
The light structure that is the main element at Hafencity Universität Station is 135 meters long and is surrounded by steel walls, which create a genuinely futuristic feel to the station. And each one of the wall panels has been individually treated, so each one of them is unique.
The colorful Hafencity Universität Station
Once you leave your train, you will really feel like you’re somewhere new. Above the platform, there are large containers that hover above the heads of everyone who leaves the trains there. They change colors and, as we said above, interpret the area’s mood. Also, they vary based on the season of the year and the weather!
According to our research on the Hafencity Universität Station, the twelve containers can light up asynchronously and with different colors, making these light installations feel more organic.
So, the pictures you can see here are not the only visual presentation of this station. It looks fantastic already, but knowing that more than can be done with these lights makes everything more attractive.
On public holidays and weekends, between 10 in the morning and 6 in the evening, light and music compositions are performed every full hour, creating a performance space out of the subway station. The light in the containers changes color to match classical music.
It must have been quite a beautiful experience, but we didn’t manage to see this since we passed by the station on a Tuesday afternoon. Outside of these times, slow color transitions take place, which looks impressive, as you can imagine from the pictures we share here. Maybe, one day, we can even see the musical light show there!
If you are curious about seeing the light show at Hafencity Universität Station, you can follow the map below or take the U4 line in Hamburg, in the direction of U-Bahn Elbbrücken. The Hafencity is the second to last station on that line.
Suppose you are interested in reading more about subway stations. In that case, we have one about the Moscow subway, another about St. Petersburg, and another about the Ghost Stations that Berlin used to have.
All the Colors of the Hafencity Universität Station in Hamburg
HafenCity Universität U-Bahn-Haltestelle
20457 Hamburg
